Winners and Losers of the NFL Draft

Finally after months of guessing games, speculation, “analysis” and endless 40 yard dashes the NFL Draft has ended. This year’s NFL Draft had no shortage of highlight moments. It had trash talk between former Cowboys and Eagles players. It had players dropping F-Bombs on live TV in front of Roger Goodell 30 seconds after being drafted and then daring Goodell to fine him. It had Rocky Balboa. It had former Jets players hilariously misspelling the word ‘Jets’. It even had Roger Goodell wiping a booger onto a little girl. But all the spectacles aside, the NFL Draft is about teams getting better and some of them were able to accomplish that goal, others not so much (Looking at you Chicago Bears). So here are my Winners and Losers of this year’s NFL Draft.

Winners

San Francisco 49ers

John Lynch looked like anything but a rookie General Manager on day one of the Draft. In a move that baffled everyone, including the Niners, The Bears traded away their first round pick, two third round picks and a fourth round pick to the Niners in exchange for San Francisco’s first round pick which happened to be number two overall. Second overall pick sounds nice until you figure out that the Bears owned the third overall pick essentially trading away future assets to the Niners to only move up one spot. This enabled San Francisco to move down one spot and still get the player they wanted, DE Solomon Thomas, while also adding additional draft picks. That’s an A+ move right there. Not only did the Niners kill it with their first pick they also were able to trade back into round one and pick up Rueben Foster, arguably a top 5 talent, with the 31st pick. The Niners were also able to get help on the offensive side of the ball and picked up Running Back Joe Williams in the 4th round who is one of the more underrated players this year. Overall not a bad start to the John Lynch/Kyle Shanahan era in San Francisco.

Deshaun Watson

If there’s any one player who should be ecstatic about the results of this year’s draft it’s Deshaun Watson out of Clemson. 4 months ago Watson led the Tigers to a National Championship win over Alabama and as with any success in college came the speculations that Watson would be a top pick, potentially landing with the Browns. The track record for Quarterbacks selected early in the draft is not good. Just over the last few years guys like Blaine Gabbert, Geno Smith, EJ Manuel and Jake Locker all found themselves drafted early and none of them have found any sort of success in the NFL. But you can’t always blame the player. In many of these situations QB’s are drafted by teams who are drafting at the top of a round for a reason. They Stink. So the young new Quarterback comes in and fails because they don’t have good players around them to help them succeed. So Watson had a reason to be nervous heading into this year’s draft, however he walked away in perhaps the best situation of any other QB selected. The Houston Texans moved up in round one to select Watson and now he comes to Houston playing for a team that has a great weapon in Deandre Hopkins, an offensive minded coach, has one of the best defenses in football and made the playoffs this year with Brock Oswieler at the helm. If Watson fails he has no one to blame but himself.

Cleveland Browns

Ah the Cleveland Browns. The Browns have been so awful at everything for so long it seems like a paranormal experience seeing them on a list of winners. I mean, this is the same team that drafted Johnny Manziel, signed RGIII and has had 26(!!!) Quarterbacks make a start in the last 17 seasons. So how can the Cleveland Browns be considered a winner? Well, the sure fact that they didn’t make the total Browns move and pick QB Mitchell Trubisky number one overall is enough to make them winners. Rather than screw up yet another draft by reaching for a QB who had no business being the number one pick they picked the best player in the draft, Myles Garrett. Smart. And then the Browns traded their other first round pick (12 overall) for more picks later in the draft including the 25th pick. And when everyone thought they would take a QB there, they fooled us all and got Jabrill Peppers from Michigan, the most dynamic player in the draft. Then they traded into the first round again and again instead of a quarterback they pick up tight end David Njoku. Eventually the Browns did get a QB, DeShone Kizer, who was listed as a potential top 5 pick in a mock draft I saw just a few months ago. Needless to say the Browns did better than we’re used to seeing. They got much needed help at multiple positions, they built around a QB rather than reaching for one and they still got a QB at a good value. The Cavaliers winning the NBA championship, the Indians making it to the World Series and the Browns making smart decisions? Things are looking up in the world of Cleveland sports.

Marcus Mariota

Marcus Mariota has to be giddy with excitement following this year’s draft. The quarterback was picked by the Tennessee Titans two years ago with the second overall pick and has been trying to turn the Titans into contenders in the AFC South. This year that goal began to become a reality as the Titans finished with 9 wins, 6 more than the previous year, and finished second in the AFC South. The Titans were able to accomplish all of this with Rishard Matthews as the team’s leading receiver. Even I had never heard of him before having to research for this. Needless to say, the Titans and their franchise quarterback needed a go to receiver. Someone that Marcus Mariota could rely on to make big plays downfield and they got that with their 5th overall pick Corey Davis. Davis played a huge role on a Western Michigan team that finished the regular season undefeated and was widely considered the top receiver in this draft class and has even warranted comparisons to Randy Moss. Tennessee hopes they’ve found the next big QB-WR duo in Mariota and Davis and they very well could have done just that.

Buccaneers

Tampa Bay is a team that is on the rise in the NFL and the rest of the league needs to take notice. Jameis Winston is becoming an excellent QB with Mike Evans as his go to target. The Bucs barely missed out on the playoffs in 2016, winning 9 games and finishing second in the NFC South but they showed a lot of reasons to expect big things from them soon including a win over Super Bowl runner up Atlanta Falcons, a win over a consistent contender in Seattle and other quality wins. So this year’s draft had the potential to be the thing that takes Tampa Bay to the next level and it may have done just that. No one could have guessed that OJ Howard would be available by the 10th pick let alone the 19th but there he was at 19 and the Buccaneers gladly selected the tremendous tight end out of Alabama. The Buccaneers were able to add not only another big pass catching weapon for their young QB but they also were able to build on the defensive side of the ball with safety Justin Evans, linebacker Kendall Beckwith and a big run stopper in Stevie Tu’ikolovatu. The Bucs are building something down in Tampa and the rest of the NFL better take notice.

Losers

Chicago Bears

The Chicago Bears are bad. They’ve been bad for a while. And it doesn’t look like they’ll be getting better any time soon. I’ve already discussed the trade between the Bears and the 49ers that sent shockwaves throughout the NFL world. What I didn’t discuss is that the Bears used the second overall pick that they received from San Francisco to select quarterback Mitchell Trubisky. The Trubisky pick was questionable to say the least. Chicago released their long time quarterback Jay Cutler, who consistently failed to meet expectations, and signed quarterback Mike Glennon who was considered to be one of the best QB options in free agency. So why give up so much to move up one spot to get a quarterback when you just signed one who everyone believed would be the week one starter. And to make matters worse the Bears are paying Glennon 45 million dollars. As if this wasn’t already a bad situation for the Bears, their best player and wide receiver Alshon Jeffery left in free agency and the Bears failed to address this need. So now no matter who the starter at quarterback is week one they’ll be expected to succeed without any big play targets. Of course 10 years from now Trubisky could be the best QB in the NFL and will have led the Bears to a Super Bowl but for now the Bears are a loser of the draft.

New York Jets

The fact that former New York Jet Tony Richardson tried to pump up Jets fans prior to announcing the team’s second round pick but instead made headlines for spelling the word “Jets” J-E-T-E is enough to land them on a list on draft losers. But what else do you expect from a team known for the ‘Butt Fumble’. In fact the Jets actually looked like they were on their way to a successful draft after their first pick. Safety Jamal Adams was believed to be the best overall player in the draft so when he fell to the Jets at the sixth pick most people were already crowning the Jets as one of the draft’s winners. But then in the second round the Jets went back to being the Jets. Starting with the misspelling of the team’s name and continued when the team selected Marcus Maye. The problem with selecting Maye is that he plays the same position as Jamal Adams and with a team that has as many holes in their roster as the Jets do then picking two players who play the same position with your first two picks doesn’t do much to help.

Saints

The Saints did nothing in the draft that made the team any worse and in fact were fairly quiet throughout the whole process and didn’t make much noise. So why are they on my list of draft losers? For that very reason. Before the draft the Saints traded away their most electrifying player in Brandon Cooks to the Patriots for their first round pick which the Saints used to select Ryan Ramczyk an offensive lineman. That’s not what you want to see as a Saints fan. You lose your most exciting player in Cooks and in return you essentially get an offensive lineman. I do love the Marshon Lattimore pick at 11 but the Saints didn’t do enough in this draft to make up for the loss of Cooks. And to make matters worse the Saints were on the phone with top 10 talent Rueben Foster and were seconds away from selecting Foster with the 32nd pick. That was until Foster hung up on New Orleans because he had just been picked by San Francisco at 31.

Bengals

The Bengals made headlines over the weekend and not for good reasons. Initially it was because the team selected wide receiver John Ross with the 9th overall pick which was deemed to be much too high for a player with the same caliber as Ross especially when you already have one of the best wide receivers in the NFL on your roster. But that quickly became obsolete after the Bengals picked running back Joe Mixon in the second round. Mixon was widely considered a first round talent, except the running back from Oklahoma was arrested for domestic violence after a video surfaced of Mixon punching a woman in the face at a restaurant. The off field issues surrounding Mixon were so serious that many teams had ruled out drafting him at all. So to see the Bengals select him in the second round raised some eyebrows especially considering the Bengals are known for picking up players who have multiple off field issues. They say any publicity is good publicity but that may not be the case for the Bengals.

Buffalo Bills

I had to save this one for last. The Bills haven’t made the playoffs in 17 years and it’s not hard to see why after the past few days. The Bills are widely considered to be one the more dysfunctional organizations in the NFL and they didn’t do anything to help their cause over the weekend. The Bills’ draft class was good not great. Picking up a wide receiver was much needed after they lost two of their best ones in free agency. Bills fans are hopeful that Zay Jones can become a productive receiver seeing as they’re one Sammy Watkins injury away from having a wide receiver group with the talent level of a high school team, and judging by Watkins’ injury past, that should be at about week three. But all of this isn’t why the Bills are on my list of losers. No, it’s what happened after the draft. The draft concluded Saturday afternoon and by Sunday morning the Bills had fired their general manager. The move itself doesn’t warrant making my list of losers but the timing does. What kind of team fires their GM right after the draft?! Unless owner Terry Pegula had a nightmare about then GM Doug Whaley that night then the timing of this fire makes zero sense. None. General Managers call the shots in the draft so why would Buffalo allow Whaley to call the shots during the draft only to fire him the next day? And if he wasn’t calling the shots during the draft why not fire him weeks ago so a new staff could draft the players they want. And this isn’t even the most alarming part of this whole situation. At the end of the season Buffalo fired Rex Ryan and Whaley was reportedly in the dark as the why the move was made. It’s not a good thing when the GM doesn’t know why the coach was fired, it’s his job to know. Then the owner of the Bills gave Whaley a vote of confidence and even had him lead the search for the new head coach. Now here we are 3 months later and Whaley is no longer employed. So now any potential replacement would be coming to a situation where they will have had no say in the current head coach, no say in what happened in free agency and no say in who the team drafted. This doesn’t sound like the ideal situation for any GM who has any options other than Buffalo. So now the Bills are stuck in a situation where any GM they get will most likely be there only because he has nothing better to do, and those usually aren’t the kind of guys you want running the show.